Back when President Obama rolled into the White House for the first time, I was in the midst of an aggressive campaign to address the stranglehold placed on our national security and our economy by addiction to OPEC oil.

The crux of that plan was to expand renewables (wind and solar) in power generation, and replace dirtier-burning and more expensive OPEC oil with our abundant supplies of cleaner-burning domestic natural gas in the transportation sector.

Washington lawmakers refused to foot the bill for America to go down that path. Now, in an ironic twist of fate, the Germans will finance it for us. And we’re fools if we don’t take advantage of this opportunity.

Here’s the background, and my suggested path forward.

In 2015, the German automaker, Volkswagen, was found to have installed software on its diesel-powered vehicles that provided false emissions data — data that understated the emissions their vehicles were actually producing.